Another bien-pensant high-tech, green-washed ‘My party left me’ Democrat, whose real allegiance is to the business/DLC/Third Way faction inside and outside the Democratic Party…
Some men rob you with a gun. Some men rob you with a fountain pen. Nowadays, some men rob you with an RoHS-compliant iPad connected to a solar panel.
This is what happens when a state decides that the thing politics needs more than anything else is fewer politicians.
Can Ben Joe ‘Nighthorse’ Manchin be far behind?
5.
JPL
If there are any Georgians around, any ideas on why Ricketts anti-spending group is attacking Gingrey so much. I’m not a Gingrey fan but I wonder who he supports.
6.
JPL
Is there anyone besides me disappointed about Sebelius resigning. I know she was responsible but she has taken so much shit from the racists assholes, I feel bad.
7.
Trollhattan
Australia about to get hammered by a Cat 5 cyclone. At high tide. What’s Aussie for “Holy shit!” Crikey?
We’re in the market to get a meat slicer. Which one do you have, so we know not to get it?
9.
Davis X. Machina
@JPL: There was a non-trivial caucus here for putting her head on a pike a few months ago.
Before then, there was a non-trivial caucus for putting her head on a pike for accepting the job in the first place, and giving away a Senate seat.
Then there was the time there was a non-trivial caucus here for putting her head on a pike over emergency contraception…
If I think hard, I’ll remember a few others.
I’m guessing she’s just tired — and not just of Republicans.
I am going to be in Maryland for a week, and left plenty of time to hit a museum while in DC. Any recommendations for Indian food on the metro rail line? Also, I am open to having my mind changed about the Natural History Museum.
12.
JPL
@Betty Cracker: Would you mind explaining your last foil design. I am still trying to figure out Pollack’s paintings so might need the extra help.
13.
Keith G
Up close and personal….well actually 200 yards away.
The Montrose/Kirby area of Houston is a walkable community. Walking back home from Trader Joe’s, I noticed a bunch of traffic at the end of my block. I knew the the President was visiting a private home a few blocks away, but that was in the opposite direction. A bit later last night night, a neighbor sent me a text that Michelle Obama had stopped in for dinner at the restaurant at the end of our block.
They picked a great time to visit. The weather in Houston has been perfect and the evenings as beautiful as can be.
14.
Pogonip
Betty, what advice were you given about insomnia?
15.
PsiFighter37
Looks like Sebelius is resigning. Not terribly sad about her leaving, although I do wish that Obama had not appointed her to the position in the first place (I think she could’ve had a legitimate shot at picking up one of the Kansas seats at some point).
In my neck of the woods Bobby “Gilligan” Jindal has called for Vance “Family Values” McCallister to resign
David Vitter still strangely silent….
18.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Davis X. Machina: Hilda Solis and Ken Salazar were pretty uncontroversial, and they both quit. Stephen Chu, too. I’m sadder about the end of the Colbert Report
I’m sure the confirmation hearings will have all the substance and maturity of a folding table full of Larouche brochures.
I think that whiny self-pitying thing he said a few months ago (“Here I am stuck making only $172,000 a year”) has come back to bite him. You don’t say stuff like that and stay on the sweet side of small-government types like Ricketts.
On another (tangentially related) topic, did anyone hear President Obama’s speech today in Texas at the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts? I missed maybe the first 5-6 minutes, but what I heard I thought was among his better speeches.
They keep trying to buy wins. They need to stop trying to make buying wins happen, and everyone except the front office there knows it.
22.
WaterGirl
@Pogonip: Did you happen to notice that I replied to your earlier question on another thread with a link to the thread where much advice was given?
23.
Violet
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m sadder about the end of the Colbert Report too. I’m really going to miss the show. I wish Stephen Colbert well and it sounds like he really wanted the job so good for him. But I don’t see how he can bring the satire and the interesting guests (authors, scientists, artists) he has on the Report to a network late night show. He’s such a talented guy so maybe he can do great things. I hope so. But I’m going to miss The Colbert Report like crazy.
24.
MikeJ
Anyone ever have trouble with sudo not working remotely? Weird error. I’m using fwbuilder on a win7 box. Last time I updated the firewall on the target machine was in jan/feb, everything worked fine. The script gets scp’d over fine, but returns a sorry, try again when trying to sudo to run the script.
I can ssh into this box as the same user fwbuilder uses and sudo /etc/fw/machinename.fw just fine. Examining the sudoers file doesn’t show anything obviously weird. Reversing the polarity of the neutron flow didn’t seem to help.
Yes, I’m sorry to see her go, although I guess not really surprised. Wonder who will succeed her in the post.
ETA: I should say, wonder who will be nominated to succeed her. No guarantee that Obama’s nominee will make it through the confirmation process. And that’s a shame, because in the first year of ACA, we’re going to need an active, hands-on, competent HHS Secretary. Absent that position being filled, there may be further snags, which will just give the Republicans more anti-Obamacare ammunition.
26.
JPL
@SiubhanDuinne: I agree but for Ricketts to try to defeat him, means he supports someone. I’m thinking he supports David Purdue and is trying to prevent a runoff. Of course, that’s just a guess.
also.. from the nytimes
The president is hoping that Ms. Burwell, 48, a Harvard- and Oxford-educated West Virginia native with a background in economic policy, will bring an intense focus and management acumen to the department. The budget office, which she has overseen since April of last year, is deeply involved in developing and carrying out health care policy.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It’s a rare cabinet secretary who manages to stick it out through two full terms- which ought to make it clear just how tired the President must be after two terms.
Before then, there was a non-trivial caucus for putting her head on a pike for accepting the job in the first place, and giving away a Senate seat.
Sebelius was a Governor, not a Senator.
30.
scav
We really maybe need to be paying more attention to Canadian politics — they seem to have high-level contender status. Patrick Brazeau, senator, may face charges of assault, cocaine possession and uttering threats. This is after being suspended from the Senate in November and on top of unrelated sexual assault and fraud charges. He’s had his wages garnished and is said to be a manager of a local gentlemen’s club while waiting around to be re-eligable as a Senator. Forget Telenovellas eh?!
31.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Violet: I do hope he does something original with the format. He’s about the only replacement who could stop me from switching over to Jimmy Kimmel
Meanwhile, Ben Shapiro is profoundly stupid
His latest act of beclowning, though, may be his best/worst yet. After sending off multiple tweets of pouting outrage over Colbert’s hiring earlier in the day, Shapiro penned a column that argued that Colbert’s shtick of pretending to be a conservative pundit while acting like a bigot and fool was the moral equivalent of performing in blackface
and in case you’re thinking Shapiro is fourteen and doesn’t know what he’s saying, there’s a picture.
32.
Keith G
@Violet: Yeah, The Colbert Report is a national treasure, but I think that there is a “best by” limit on a show such as that. Last year when he did a long interview with Terry Gross, I got the sense there was so much more that he wanted to do outside of the confines of that character.
He now has that chance.
33.
MikeJ
It’s a pity we can’t just clone Colbert. I want both his new show, where he gets to do new stuff, and the old one too.
Rush Limbaugh said “CBS Has Just Declared War on the Heartland of America”:
“No longer is comedy going to be a covert assault on traditional American values, conservatives––now it’s just going to be wide out in the open. What this hire means is a redefinition of what is funny and a redefinition of what is comedy.”
34.
SiubhanDuinne
@scav: sad news in Canadian politics today, and I don’t care that the guy was a Tory — former (until last month) Canadian finance minister Jim Flaherty died very suddenly today. Although he was close to PM Harper, Flaherty was truly liked and respected across the aisles.
Several years ago, when he was minister of various stuff for the Ontario Government, he made a couple of visits to Atlanta and I had a chance to spend some time with him. Just a really nice, decent, funny, friendly, smart guy. I’m very sorry he’s gone, leaving behind a wife and triplet sons. RIP.
@the Conster:
It has to do with what some of the guys at Baseball Prospectus called the Success Cycle. Their team is built around a bunch of brittle veterans who could be the core of a pennant winner if they could stay healthy. As long as the team looks like that, the front office is going to be short-sighted and mortgage the future to try to squeeze out one more good year before the team falls apart. They aren’t going to give up and start rebuilding until there’s no hope of winning right away.
I have never had any kind of insomnia that was bad enough for me to worry about. However, I participate in a sport (randonneuring) in which you can make up for lack of talent by a lack of sleep. What I have learned about sleep is that it should be taken in 1.5 hour intervals. You wake up every 1.5 hours anyway. If I time things perfectly, I feel like I just went to sleep, even if I really slept for 7 1/2 hours. I also go to sleep almost immediately if I reassure myself that lying there relaxing is the same as sleeping. I have gone 4 days on 6 hours of sleep following these simple rules.
39.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@MikeJ: Didn’t the Limbenberg used to use the “I’m really a comedian” defense?
Reading some the on-line articles and comments about Letterman’s retirement, the ‘wingers really hate him too.
40.
Davis X. Machina
@SiubhanDuinne: It’s terrible, but all I could think of was “Well, that and having played Count Floyd on SCTV — not a bad run.”
No guarantee that Obama’s nominee will make it through the confirmation process.
The chances are a lot better now that the filibuster is off the table. As long as Obama’s candidate doesn’t lose and Democratic votes, the Senate can confirm.
Hopefully, the BLM takes care of these asshats in Nevada with a little more efficiency than Ruby Ridge.
44.
Tommy
@Roger Moore: I think you are mistaken. My mom likes to joke my grandfather put headphones on her belly so I could hear Jack Buck call a baseball game when I was a fetus. Of course you have a core group of players you pay, but with my Cardinals maybe 3-4 of the best players are making a league minimum. You got to have a farm system or be the Yankees. Able to throw a ton of money around.
You’re right, I was forgetting that the Senate did something sensible.
47.
scav
@SiubhanDuinne: Range of quotes at the CBC are impressive.
There’s also this airline navigation tidbit. A Boeing 737-200 with 19 passengers and four crew members on board went off its planned route last week.
Hildebrand said the aircraft was flying on auto-pilot using GPS navigation when the crew noted that they hadn’t been handed off from air traffic control in Edmonton to Montreal. They made a transmission to Montreal, but couldn’t make out the reply.
He said the crew was already reacting to the situation and was taking steps to get back on track when another aircraft relayed a message from Montreal to the flight crew.
“They reset those instruments and proceeded direct to Iqaluit,” Hildebrand said.
Upon arrival in Iqaluit, First Air maintenance crews checked the autopilot flight director and GPS without finding any faults. They cleared the plane to return to Rankin Inlet and then Yellowknife.
FSM may smite me, but I can actually sorta see The Virgin Ben’s attempted point, which I believe is that Colbert puts on wingnut “makeup” (blackface) and behaves in an absurd manner, adopting mannerisms which lefties/hippies (whities) believe wingnuts (darkies) manifest, but are actually bogus.
The problem, of course, is that Colbert has yet to out-wingnut the wingnuts. As we are wont to say here, there’s no such thing as Peak Wingnut – but there are some places Colbert won’t go.
That made me laugh and nod at the same time. I am a huge tech geek but I can’t get away from this thing called paper. There is never a piece of paper that is more than a foot away from me at any time. It just works.I have a though. I write it down. It is just there.
52.
JPL
@raven: Most of his money does go for republican causes so don’t be fooled by the fix. He put in millions to bring up Jeremiah Wright again. I have friends who pulled their money from T.D. Ameritrade after his ads. I just want to know who he is for.
53.
shelly
It’s the Wine Foil Apocalypse!
************
Spring has officially arrived here in New Jersey. Today, my dog Katie had her first sun bath on the patio. (Gotta bake that stomach!). And then dug a new hidey-hole in the garden.
54.
LT
You, madam, are no ordinary wino.
That replica of cozy small stove, with a freshly skinned sand shark covered in cocktail sauce (atop the planks of a very handsome wooden shelf), with scattered shards of metal & insulated wiring is a profoundly sculpted work of art.
As much as I’d like to know, I will not embarrass myself by asking you to explain its meaning.
But tell me this: how many bottles does it usually take to accumulate the foil necessary to fulfill your visions?
55.
raven
@JPL: What’s this got to do with me being fooled? You asked about him and I posted the article, I didn’t write it.
@Tommy:
The idea is that you have to look at what your team has and build your plans around what’s available. If you have a productive farm system, you’re in great shape. You promote good players, build from within, and can fill in gaps with trades and maybe a judicious free agent signing. Those teams can be cheap because players are generally cheaper before they hit free agency. If your farm system is really great, you can pay to keep hold of really unique talents but otherwise let players go when they hit free agency and promote players from the farm to fill in the gaps. This was basically the Braves’ system during their run with Bobby Cox. If not- if the crop of young talent was a lucky one-time thing- it may make sense to build for the short term and try to get enough talent to push the team over the top now rather than fall just short and then have the core of your team walk when they hit free agency.
The question is what to do when you don’t have talent coming up from the farm system, or not enough to build a winning team around. If you have a bunch of talented veterans, you can either mortgage the future trying to plaster over the cracks and squeeze out one more winning system (what the Yankees are doing) or trade them away for enough young talent to rebuild with (i.e. hold a fire sale). If you don’t have enough talent to have a plausible chance of winning, it’s usually a mistake to keep the guys you have in the hopes of putting fans in the seats; you’re generally better off trading any veterans with trade value for young talent you might be able to build around in the future. If you have nothing, you fire your front office and bring in people who know how to build from below.
The Elders are just not having it anymore.
They don’t care.
They not pretending that they care
It can’t happen soon enough for me.
60.
JPL
@raven: Sorry, I should have realized who I was responding to. I hate the ad cuz I want to know who the bastard supports. Makes me want to vote for Gingrey in the primary. It’s funny seeing Gingrey’s ad in his dr. attire come up after the slam.
61.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: I wanted Barack Obama to choose her as VP, and I was terribly disappointed when he didn’t. But he was right, of course, Biden was a much better choice.
I do like her, though, and I was disappointed to find out that she is stepping down.
Edit: And Barack woke me up with a text message at 4-fucking am in the morning on a Saturday to tell me that Biden was VP. And then that same day I got to go to Springfield and see Obama & Biden together. It feels like yesterday.
62.
raven
@JPL: Oh it’s ok, I’d seen the ads and figured they were payed for by scumbags. That’s about as far as I went with it until you mentioned it.
The problem, of course, is that Colbert has yet to out-wingnut the wingnuts.
Yeah, and nobody got confused and believed that blackface performers were actually black. There are plenty of wingnuts who are fooled and believe Colbert is really one of them.
@raven: I don’t recall whether I’ve thanked you for the wonderful owl video you posted last week. It’s so peaceful and beautiful that I left it open in my browser and have watched it every day. You can just hear the the sound of the wings in flight, just wonderful.
Fucking cops need to learn to talk before shooting. Sheriffs deputies in West Hollywood accidentally shot a fleeing hostage who they mistook for the hostage taker. They were eventually able to subdue the actual armed hostage taker without needing their guns, but apparently shot first and asked questions later when it was an escaping hostage. I assume there will be no actual consequences for the deputies involved.
73.
WaterGirl
@JPL: They had to text about 3 million people, so I think we all got texts at different times during the night. Mine was 4am and it startled me out of a sound sleep.
@MikeJ: I grew up in the heartland. I would like to take it back from Rush. Absent that, I think it will survive having Colbert on TV performing in whiteface.
Heard it, didn’t see it, if that matters. I tuned in, I guess, seconds after Vernon Jordan started talking and didn’t know who it was until the interview was over — didn’t recognize his voice — but was blown away by what he said. Never knew much about him except that during the Clinton administration he was Bubba’s BFF. Very impressive.
78.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: I was on the Obama blog all the time. I was nancym, I think. Who were you? (you don’t have to answer)
Dark, biting satire of the television industry, focusing on an Ivy-League educated black writer at a major network. Frustrated that his ideas for a “Cosby Show”-esque take on the black family has been rejected by network brass, he devises an outlandish scheme: reviving the minstrel show. The hook: instead of white actors in black face, the show stars black actors in even blacker face. The show becomes an instant smash, but with the success also comes repercussions for all involved.
87.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: I don’t do twitter, but I can ask AL to give you my email if you ask her for it. Would that work?
88.
WaterGirl
@Pogonip: Steeplejack was kind enough to find my comment and link to it in this thread, so you can find it easily if you want it.
@WaterGirl: I got it! I missed it the first time around in all that Mclaren stuff. Thanks to you and the others.
I think the medical mess is a national emergency, but I also think no politician is willing to deal with it as such, particularly since if you tried you’d have another national emergency, Fox News and talk radio whipping up hysteria.
94.
raven
@WaterGirl: Ya’ll got me all screwed up on what the hell you are talking about!
Pogonip had asked (twice on previous threads) for the advice betty had gotten about insomnia. One of those threads was earlier today and I had found the link for the thread where that was discussed, and I had posted the link for Pogonip. I didn’t know which thread I had posted it on, but Steeplejack found the thread and linked to my comment in the previous thread in comment 43.
I could go on, but it’s probably more than you cared to know!
Edit: This is going to make me sound like an idiot, but until your friend’s video, I had never thought about owls flying. So your video is much more how I think of owls, ’cause it’s hanging out on a branch. The wings on the flying owl were amazing.
96.
jenn
@Cassidy: Holy crap. Yeah. I can’t believe these guys have been flouting the BLM since the ’90s. And his “this land should belong to the state” baloney is *such* bullshit. That whole area was brought into US territory by the actions of the US government. It wasn’t one of the original “states,” where you could at least a little more reasonably make that argument.
97.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: I sent my email to Anne Laurie, too. Can’t wait to find out who you are/were!
Edit: Not sure when AL will see our messages. I am closing my laptop for the evening, but I will look forward to hearing from you soon. Or soon-ish.
98.
raven
@WaterGirl: Whew, got it. We’ve seen them on the wing several times.
Some history (and there were successful African-American entertainers who naturally were darker than the burnt cork).
Dewey Pigmeat Markham was born in Durham, North Carolina. His family was the most prominent on their street, which was later officially renamed Markham Street. Running away from home in 1918, Markham began his career in traveling music and burlesque shows. He took up with a white showman he ambiguously referred to over the years as “Mr. Booker” owner of a “gilly carnival.” Soon, Markham found himself in blackface. “Mr. Booker came over to us before the show with a can of Stein’s burnt-cork and showed us how to put it on in front of the mirror. He also had some pink and white lip make-up.”
“You may wonder why a Negro had to do that, and all I can tell you is that’s the way it was. Just about every Negro entertainer in those days worked in burnt-cork and lip make-up – even Bert Williams who was the greatest of them all. Matter of fact, I never went before an audience without my burnt-cork until 1943 – more than twenty years later.”Source
Blackface remains the most absurd practice in the history of American show business.1 White men applied burnt cork to their face in a laughable attempt to portray and make mockery of their black brethren. The practice seems shameful to the contemporary sensibility and is too often accepted as “of its time.” However, blackface was often considered outrageous to enlightened members of the public even during its effervescent heyday from 1870 to 1930. Even more absurd than typical blackface minstrelsy was the offshoot practice of black performers donning blackface in similar acts of demeaning buffoonery. This astounding concept was no novelty, but one of most common practices in turn of the century theatrics.
[snip]Why would an African-American performer deem it necessary to indulge in blackface? The purpose completely eludes the modern mind. George Walker, a vaudeville performer and one time partner of Bert Williams explained that “blackfaced white comedians used to make themselves look as ridiculous as they could when portraying a ‘darky’ character. In their make-up they always had tremendously big red lips … The one fatal result of this to the colored performers was that they imitated the white performers in their make-up as ‘darkies.’ Nothing seemed more absurd than to see a colored man making himself ridiculous in order to portray himself.” Walker’s assessment of the illogical convention would be shared by most… which makes it all the more frustrating to learn he was one of the most accomplished practitioners of blackface to ever grease up.
Everyone has a different theory on the origins of what Henry Sampson calls “Blacks in Blackface.” One argument is that black comedians used blackface to “maximize the contrast between himself and the well-dressed ‘straight’ characters in the show” – the equivalent of a Lou Costello in cork and straight man Bud Abbott without. Sonny Craver, a soul singer and one-time partner of Pigmeat Markham explained the purpose as an “invisible screen.” Craver says that “with the blackface, the way I understood it, you wasn’t white or … black. When a black comedian wore blackface, he wasn’t a black comedian any more! He was a comic.”…. Source
103.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@raven: Thanks for all the owl stuff. It’s all quite cool.
104.
Pogonip
@WaterGirl: Owls are neat. I hear a lot of hooting around here, some of which does come from owls, but rarely see them. What I see a lot of are peregrines; for some reason they’ve become ubiquitous around here in the last few years.
105.
Pogonip
Also, we’ve got a shortage of lightning bugs. Even when winters are mild, we have few lightning bugs. I miss them.
Never seem to run short of (bleep)ing mosquitoes, though!
I feel even more justified in not buying a Mazda now that they’re being recalled for a frickin’ SPIDER INFESTATION.
Sounds like a joke, but is not. Eek!
108.
J R in WV
We have a big population of barred owls just above our house in the head of the hollow, up on the ridge. I can hoot and they will hoot back, even tho they know I’m not quite an owl.
Out in SE Arizona we saw a big owl fly out in front of the truck just before total darkness. It would be in a tree above a pond, what they call a stock tank out there, and as the truck came to the tree it would fly out the road.
I have no idea what kind of owl that was, as I’m new to the south-west, it never made much noise. I’d love to hear opinions from people familiar with owls of the sonoran desert. Our AZ place is just 25 miles north of the border, in the foothills of the Dragoon Mtns. There is a huge mountain lion in the neighborhood, and neighbors have seen coatimundis and other strange critters.
I have some pretty good pictures of a fox just a few hundred yards from the house out there, too.
I’ve seen the barred owls around home in W Va in the evenings, and hear them most evenings when the weather is such that you can have the windows open.
@Arm The Homeless: pffff, don’t be daft. Hit the National Bldg Museum at judiciary square, National Gallery just to the east, lunch/shop at Union Station if you fancy crowds or west at Old Post Office bdlg if you care for a walk and like quirky old bldgs. All on red line that takes u back to MD. Unless u are staying on green, lol.
@JPL: I’m sad as well. I’m very happy however that our President allowed her to stay through this most critical period for the ACA. I was hoping the happy enrollment numbers might mean that she would stay. I’m just hoping that this was her decision and not something from the white house…
@JPL: I’m sad as well. I’m very happy however that our President allowed her to stay through this most critical period for the ACA. I was hoping the happy enrollment numbers might mean that she would stay. I’m just hoping that this was her decision and not something from the white house…
@JPL: I’m sad as well. I’m very happy however that our President allowed her to stay through this most critical period for the ACA. I was hoping the happy enrollment numbers might mean that she would stay. I’m just hoping that this was her decision and not something from the white house…
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Trollhattan
Bravo on capsule Black Ka-nigit!
Mnemosyne
You need a little blood spilled around. Maybe Merlot, or a nice red Zinfandel.
jeffreyw
Roasted sprouts with crispy prosciutto and a balsamic glaze. I am in need of a decent meat slicer, the prosciutto had the little motor on mine squealing in horror.
Davis X. Machina
Angus King reads polls, gets in touch with his inner Republican.
Another bien-pensant high-tech, green-washed ‘My party left me’ Democrat, whose real allegiance is to the business/DLC/Third Way faction inside and outside the Democratic Party…
Some men rob you with a gun. Some men rob you with a fountain pen. Nowadays, some men rob you with an RoHS-compliant iPad connected to a solar panel.
This is what happens when a state decides that the thing politics needs more than anything else is fewer politicians.
Can
BenJoe ‘Nighthorse’ Manchin be far behind?JPL
If there are any Georgians around, any ideas on why Ricketts anti-spending group is attacking Gingrey so much. I’m not a Gingrey fan but I wonder who he supports.
JPL
Is there anyone besides me disappointed about Sebelius resigning. I know she was responsible but she has taken so much shit from the racists assholes, I feel bad.
Trollhattan
Australia about to get hammered by a Cat 5 cyclone. At high tide. What’s Aussie for “Holy shit!” Crikey?
Crikey.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-11/cyclone-ita-shows-no-sign-of-weakening-as-it-nears-n-queensland/5382562
Ferdzy
@jeffreyw:
We’re in the market to get a meat slicer. Which one do you have, so we know not to get it?
Davis X. Machina
@JPL: There was a non-trivial caucus here for putting her head on a pike a few months ago.
Before then, there was a non-trivial caucus for putting her head on a pike for accepting the job in the first place, and giving away a Senate seat.
Then there was the time there was a non-trivial caucus here for putting her head on a pike over emergency contraception…
If I think hard, I’ll remember a few others.
I’m guessing she’s just tired — and not just of Republicans.
Betty Cracker
@JPL: I like her. Sorry to see her go.
Arm The Homeless
I am going to be in Maryland for a week, and left plenty of time to hit a museum while in DC. Any recommendations for Indian food on the metro rail line? Also, I am open to having my mind changed about the Natural History Museum.
JPL
@Betty Cracker: Would you mind explaining your last foil design. I am still trying to figure out Pollack’s paintings so might need the extra help.
Keith G
Up close and personal….well actually 200 yards away.
The Montrose/Kirby area of Houston is a walkable community. Walking back home from Trader Joe’s, I noticed a bunch of traffic at the end of my block. I knew the the President was visiting a private home a few blocks away, but that was in the opposite direction. A bit later last night night, a neighbor sent me a text that Michelle Obama had stopped in for dinner at the restaurant at the end of our block.
They picked a great time to visit. The weather in Houston has been perfect and the evenings as beautiful as can be.
Pogonip
Betty, what advice were you given about insomnia?
PsiFighter37
Looks like Sebelius is resigning. Not terribly sad about her leaving, although I do wish that Obama had not appointed her to the position in the first place (I think she could’ve had a legitimate shot at picking up one of the Kansas seats at some point).
JPL
@Keith G: That is really cool.
jacy
Brava on the Wine Knight!
In my neck of the woods Bobby “Gilligan” Jindal has called for Vance “Family Values” McCallister to resign
David Vitter still strangely silent….
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Davis X. Machina: Hilda Solis and Ken Salazar were pretty uncontroversial, and they both quit. Stephen Chu, too. I’m sadder about the end of the Colbert Report
I’m sure the confirmation hearings will have all the substance and maturity of a folding table full of Larouche brochures.
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL:
I think that whiny self-pitying thing he said a few months ago (“Here I am stuck making only $172,000 a year”) has come back to bite him. You don’t say stuff like that and stay on the sweet side of small-government types like Ricketts.
On another (tangentially related) topic, did anyone hear President Obama’s speech today in Texas at the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts? I missed maybe the first 5-6 minutes, but what I heard I thought was among his better speeches.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
This is why I’m a Thought Leader:
Me in November
Heritage Foundation’s Conference on Feminism 9 days ago
the Conster
@efgoldman:
They keep trying to buy wins. They need to stop trying to make buying wins happen, and everyone except the front office there knows it.
WaterGirl
@Pogonip: Did you happen to notice that I replied to your earlier question on another thread with a link to the thread where much advice was given?
Violet
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m sadder about the end of the Colbert Report too. I’m really going to miss the show. I wish Stephen Colbert well and it sounds like he really wanted the job so good for him. But I don’t see how he can bring the satire and the interesting guests (authors, scientists, artists) he has on the Report to a network late night show. He’s such a talented guy so maybe he can do great things. I hope so. But I’m going to miss The Colbert Report like crazy.
MikeJ
Anyone ever have trouble with sudo not working remotely? Weird error. I’m using fwbuilder on a win7 box. Last time I updated the firewall on the target machine was in jan/feb, everything worked fine. The script gets scp’d over fine, but returns a sorry, try again when trying to sudo to run the script.
I can ssh into this box as the same user fwbuilder uses and sudo /etc/fw/machinename.fw just fine. Examining the sudoers file doesn’t show anything obviously weird. Reversing the polarity of the neutron flow didn’t seem to help.
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL:
Yes, I’m sorry to see her go, although I guess not really surprised. Wonder who will succeed her in the post.
ETA: I should say, wonder who will be nominated to succeed her. No guarantee that Obama’s nominee will make it through the confirmation process. And that’s a shame, because in the first year of ACA, we’re going to need an active, hands-on, competent HHS Secretary. Absent that position being filled, there may be further snags, which will just give the Republicans more anti-Obamacare ammunition.
JPL
@SiubhanDuinne: I agree but for Ricketts to try to defeat him, means he supports someone. I’m thinking he supports David Purdue and is trying to prevent a runoff. Of course, that’s just a guess.
also.. from the nytimes
The president is hoping that Ms. Burwell, 48, a Harvard- and Oxford-educated West Virginia native with a background in economic policy, will bring an intense focus and management acumen to the department. The budget office, which she has overseen since April of last year, is deeply involved in developing and carrying out health care policy.
Roger Moore
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It’s a rare cabinet secretary who manages to stick it out through two full terms- which ought to make it clear just how tired the President must be after two terms.
Dedc79
@Arm The Homeless: Rasika is by far the best but it’s pricey.
SiubhanDuinne
@Davis X. Machina:
Sebelius was a Governor, not a Senator.
scav
We really maybe need to be paying more attention to Canadian politics — they seem to have high-level contender status. Patrick Brazeau, senator, may face charges of assault, cocaine possession and uttering threats. This is after being suspended from the Senate in November and on top of unrelated sexual assault and fraud charges. He’s had his wages garnished and is said to be a manager of a local gentlemen’s club while waiting around to be re-eligable as a Senator. Forget Telenovellas eh?!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Violet: I do hope he does something original with the format. He’s about the only replacement who could stop me from switching over to Jimmy Kimmel
Meanwhile, Ben Shapiro is profoundly stupid
and in case you’re thinking Shapiro is fourteen and doesn’t know what he’s saying, there’s a picture.
Keith G
@Violet: Yeah, The Colbert Report is a national treasure, but I think that there is a “best by” limit on a show such as that. Last year when he did a long interview with Terry Gross, I got the sense there was so much more that he wanted to do outside of the confines of that character.
He now has that chance.
MikeJ
It’s a pity we can’t just clone Colbert. I want both his new show, where he gets to do new stuff, and the old one too.
Rush Limbaugh said “CBS Has Just Declared War on the Heartland of America”:
“No longer is comedy going to be a covert assault on traditional American values, conservatives––now it’s just going to be wide out in the open. What this hire means is a redefinition of what is funny and a redefinition of what is comedy.”
SiubhanDuinne
@scav: sad news in Canadian politics today, and I don’t care that the guy was a Tory — former (until last month) Canadian finance minister Jim Flaherty died very suddenly today. Although he was close to PM Harper, Flaherty was truly liked and respected across the aisles.
Several years ago, when he was minister of various stuff for the Ontario Government, he made a couple of visits to Atlanta and I had a chance to spend some time with him. Just a really nice, decent, funny, friendly, smart guy. I’m very sorry he’s gone, leaving behind a wife and triplet sons. RIP.
raven
@JPL: Ricketts.
Davis X. Machina
@SiubhanDuinne: She was supposedly a live prospect to succede Brownback in 2010…
Roger Moore
@the Conster:
It has to do with what some of the guys at Baseball Prospectus called the Success Cycle. Their team is built around a bunch of brittle veterans who could be the core of a pennant winner if they could stay healthy. As long as the team looks like that, the front office is going to be short-sighted and mortgage the future to try to squeeze out one more good year before the team falls apart. They aren’t going to give up and start rebuilding until there’s no hope of winning right away.
Eric U.
@Pogonip: someone told her to go camping.
I have never had any kind of insomnia that was bad enough for me to worry about. However, I participate in a sport (randonneuring) in which you can make up for lack of talent by a lack of sleep. What I have learned about sleep is that it should be taken in 1.5 hour intervals. You wake up every 1.5 hours anyway. If I time things perfectly, I feel like I just went to sleep, even if I really slept for 7 1/2 hours. I also go to sleep almost immediately if I reassure myself that lying there relaxing is the same as sleeping. I have gone 4 days on 6 hours of sleep following these simple rules.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@MikeJ: Didn’t the Limbenberg used to use the “I’m really a comedian” defense?
Reading some the on-line articles and comments about Letterman’s retirement, the ‘wingers really hate him too.
Davis X. Machina
@SiubhanDuinne: It’s terrible, but all I could think of was “Well, that and having played Count Floyd on SCTV — not a bad run.”
Then I realized it was two different guys.
Roger Moore
@SiubhanDuinne:
The chances are a lot better now that the filibuster is off the table. As long as Obama’s candidate doesn’t lose and Democratic votes, the Senate can confirm.
Steeplejack
@Pogonip:
What WaterGirl said.
Here’s her answer from the earlier thread.
Cassidy
Hopefully, the BLM takes care of these asshats in Nevada with a little more efficiency than Ruby Ridge.
Tommy
@Roger Moore: I think you are mistaken. My mom likes to joke my grandfather put headphones on her belly so I could hear Jack Buck call a baseball game when I was a fetus. Of course you have a core group of players you pay, but with my Cardinals maybe 3-4 of the best players are making a league minimum. You got to have a farm system or be the Yankees. Able to throw a ton of money around.
SiubhanDuinne
@Davis X. Machina:
LOL, yes.
SiubhanDuinne
@Roger Moore:
You’re right, I was forgetting that the Senate did something sensible.
scav
@SiubhanDuinne: Range of quotes at the CBC are impressive.
There’s also this airline navigation tidbit. A Boeing 737-200 with 19 passengers and four crew members on board went off its planned route last week.
cue spooky deedoodeedoo music.
Bookend that to this: Map illustrates ‘Russian GPS’ failure
/OT advertisement for not forgetting backup methods of navigation and the friends of the paper map foundation.
SFAW
@JPL:
I thought McCain made it clear that we all are. Or were.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
FSM may smite me, but I can actually sorta see The Virgin Ben’s attempted point, which I believe is that Colbert puts on wingnut “makeup” (blackface) and behaves in an absurd manner, adopting mannerisms which lefties/hippies (whities) believe wingnuts (darkies) manifest, but are actually bogus.
The problem, of course, is that Colbert has yet to out-wingnut the wingnuts. As we are wont to say here, there’s no such thing as Peak Wingnut – but there are some places Colbert won’t go.
rikyrah
anyone see The Reid Report today..
there was Vernon Jordan, pretty much quoting Hank Aaron… when talking about the Supreme Court and the attack on voting rights..
“they don’t come in sheets, they have on suits”.
I’m telling y’all..
The Elders are just not having it anymore.
They don’t care.
They not pretending that they care
http://on.msnbc.com/1hwjerY
Betty Cracker
@JPL: http://youtu.be/zKhEw7nD9C4
Tommy
@scav:
That made me laugh and nod at the same time. I am a huge tech geek but I can’t get away from this thing called paper. There is never a piece of paper that is more than a foot away from me at any time. It just works.I have a though. I write it down. It is just there.
JPL
@raven: Most of his money does go for republican causes so don’t be fooled by the fix. He put in millions to bring up Jeremiah Wright again. I have friends who pulled their money from T.D. Ameritrade after his ads. I just want to know who he is for.
shelly
It’s the Wine Foil Apocalypse!
************
Spring has officially arrived here in New Jersey. Today, my dog Katie had her first sun bath on the patio. (Gotta bake that stomach!). And then dug a new hidey-hole in the garden.
LT
You, madam, are no ordinary wino.
That replica of cozy small stove, with a freshly skinned sand shark covered in cocktail sauce (atop the planks of a very handsome wooden shelf), with scattered shards of metal & insulated wiring is a profoundly sculpted work of art.
As much as I’d like to know, I will not embarrass myself by asking you to explain its meaning.
But tell me this: how many bottles does it usually take to accumulate the foil necessary to fulfill your visions?
raven
@JPL: What’s this got to do with me being fooled? You asked about him and I posted the article, I didn’t write it.
JPL
@Betty Cracker: Wow.. you did good.
Roger Moore
@Tommy:
The idea is that you have to look at what your team has and build your plans around what’s available. If you have a productive farm system, you’re in great shape. You promote good players, build from within, and can fill in gaps with trades and maybe a judicious free agent signing. Those teams can be cheap because players are generally cheaper before they hit free agency. If your farm system is really great, you can pay to keep hold of really unique talents but otherwise let players go when they hit free agency and promote players from the farm to fill in the gaps. This was basically the Braves’ system during their run with Bobby Cox. If not- if the crop of young talent was a lucky one-time thing- it may make sense to build for the short term and try to get enough talent to push the team over the top now rather than fall just short and then have the core of your team walk when they hit free agency.
The question is what to do when you don’t have talent coming up from the farm system, or not enough to build a winning team around. If you have a bunch of talented veterans, you can either mortgage the future trying to plaster over the cracks and squeeze out one more winning system (what the Yankees are doing) or trade them away for enough young talent to rebuild with (i.e. hold a fire sale). If you don’t have enough talent to have a plausible chance of winning, it’s usually a mistake to keep the guys you have in the hopes of putting fans in the seats; you’re generally better off trading any veterans with trade value for young talent you might be able to build around in the future. If you have nothing, you fire your front office and bring in people who know how to build from below.
MomSense
@Betty Cracker:
I really like Sebelius. Not only did she have to deal with all the crap, but she managed it with dignity, intelligence, and humor. She is a class act.
WaterGirl
@rikyrah:
It can’t happen soon enough for me.
JPL
@raven: Sorry, I should have realized who I was responding to. I hate the ad cuz I want to know who the bastard supports. Makes me want to vote for Gingrey in the primary. It’s funny seeing Gingrey’s ad in his dr. attire come up after the slam.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: I wanted Barack Obama to choose her as VP, and I was terribly disappointed when he didn’t. But he was right, of course, Biden was a much better choice.
I do like her, though, and I was disappointed to find out that she is stepping down.
Edit: And Barack woke me up with a text message at 4-fucking am in the morning on a Saturday to tell me that Biden was VP. And then that same day I got to go to Springfield and see Obama & Biden together. It feels like yesterday.
raven
@JPL: Oh it’s ok, I’d seen the ads and figured they were payed for by scumbags. That’s about as far as I went with it until you mentioned it.
Roger Moore
@SFAW:
Yeah, and nobody got confused and believed that blackface performers were actually black. There are plenty of wingnuts who are fooled and believe Colbert is really one of them.
lamh36
@JPL:
@ezraklein 49m
Kathleen Sebelius is resigning because Obamacare has won http://vox.com/e/5366711
MomSense
@WaterGirl:
She was my fantasy VP pick as well!
MomSense
@WaterGirl:
Forgot to say that I remember that text message!!
WaterGirl
@raven: I don’t recall whether I’ve thanked you for the wonderful owl video you posted last week. It’s so peaceful and beautiful that I left it open in my browser and have watched it every day. You can just hear the the sound of the wings in flight, just wonderful.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: Honored to be in your company!
SFAW
@Roger Moore:
Oh right, next you’ll be trying to tell me that Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll were white. I ain’t as stupid as I look.
JPL
@lamh36: Nice.
@MomSense: The text was earlier though. I jumped out of bed because I’m not
use to text messages in the middle of the night.
WaterGirl
@lamh36: From your link:
Shockingly??? Ezra is such an asshole.
Roger Moore
Fucking cops need to learn to talk before shooting. Sheriffs deputies in West Hollywood accidentally shot a fleeing hostage who they mistook for the hostage taker. They were eventually able to subdue the actual armed hostage taker without needing their guns, but apparently shot first and asked questions later when it was an escaping hostage. I assume there will be no actual consequences for the deputies involved.
WaterGirl
@JPL: They had to text about 3 million people, so I think we all got texts at different times during the night. Mine was 4am and it startled me out of a sound sleep.
raven
@WaterGirl: Ah cool, I’l let the folks know!
Suffern ACE
@MikeJ: I grew up in the heartland. I would like to take it back from Rush. Absent that, I think it will survive having Colbert on TV performing in whiteface.
MomSense
@WaterGirl: @JPL:
I don’t know if you were on the barackobama blogs BITD but there were a bunch of us who were pretty much up all night that night!
SiubhanDuinne
@rikyrah:
Heard it, didn’t see it, if that matters. I tuned in, I guess, seconds after Vernon Jordan started talking and didn’t know who it was until the interview was over — didn’t recognize his voice — but was blown away by what he said. Never knew much about him except that during the Clinton administration he was Bubba’s BFF. Very impressive.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: I was on the Obama blog all the time. I was nancym, I think. Who were you? (you don’t have to answer)
NotMax
@Roger Moore
Other than African-American performers who developed a comedic act played in blackface.
There were more than one might think who ‘put on the cork’ until the practice petered out in the 1950s.
(Not a defense of blackface, just an acknowledgment of its one-time ubiquity in the entertainment industry.)
WaterGirl
Just noticed that my Tivo is set to record Groundhog Day after midnight tonight on AMC. 1:30 am Central Time.
I put it on my Tivo Wishlist when we were all talking about the movie when Harold Ramis died.
Edit: while we’re talking TV…
The Writers’ Room has the Game of Thrones folks on the show this sunday at 5am (Central Time) on Sundance.
Mnemosyne
@NotMax:
Watch just about any movie that starred Bing Crosby. He frickin’ loved doing blackface numbers and continued doing it well into the 1950s.
And, yes, there were quite a few African-American actors who had to darken their skin with makeup because they looked too white.
Betty Cracker
@WaterGirl: Missed that! Link?
Pogonip
@WaterGirl: No, sorry, I didn’t see it.
MomSense
@WaterGirl:
I remember you!! Not going to give my nym but are you on twitter? Would love to catch up!
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: Filmed just down the street from raven, I think, by people raven knows.
I can seriously feel my breathing slow as I watch the short video.
raven
I’m sure you have all seen Bamboozled
WaterGirl
@MomSense: I don’t do twitter, but I can ask AL to give you my email if you ask her for it. Would that work?
WaterGirl
@Pogonip: Steeplejack was kind enough to find my comment and link to it in this thread, so you can find it easily if you want it.
raven
@Betty Cracker:
Flight of a Barred Owl.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: Sorry, I was so excited telling you about the video, I forgot to include the link! But I see that raven did, so I guess it’s all good.
raven
@WaterGirl: And then there is MY owl movie!
MomSense
@WaterGirl:
yes! i’ll email her now!
Pogonip
@WaterGirl: I got it! I missed it the first time around in all that Mclaren stuff. Thanks to you and the others.
I think the medical mess is a national emergency, but I also think no politician is willing to deal with it as such, particularly since if you tried you’d have another national emergency, Fox News and talk radio whipping up hysteria.
raven
@WaterGirl: Ya’ll got me all screwed up on what the hell you are talking about!
WaterGirl
@raven: That was hard to follow. Sorry!
Pogonip had asked (twice on previous threads) for the advice betty had gotten about insomnia. One of those threads was earlier today and I had found the link for the thread where that was discussed, and I had posted the link for Pogonip. I didn’t know which thread I had posted it on, but Steeplejack found the thread and linked to my comment in the previous thread in comment 43.
I could go on, but it’s probably more than you cared to know!
Edit: This is going to make me sound like an idiot, but until your friend’s video, I had never thought about owls flying. So your video is much more how I think of owls, ’cause it’s hanging out on a branch. The wings on the flying owl were amazing.
jenn
@Cassidy: Holy crap. Yeah. I can’t believe these guys have been flouting the BLM since the ’90s. And his “this land should belong to the state” baloney is *such* bullshit. That whole area was brought into US territory by the actions of the US government. It wasn’t one of the original “states,” where you could at least a little more reasonably make that argument.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: I sent my email to Anne Laurie, too. Can’t wait to find out who you are/were!
Edit: Not sure when AL will see our messages. I am closing my laptop for the evening, but I will look forward to hearing from you soon. Or soon-ish.
raven
@WaterGirl: Whew, got it. We’ve seen them on the wing several times.
MomSense
@WaterGirl:
YES! Much to catch up on. I am very close with a number of people who were on the blogs. We have had little gatherings over the years.
Betty Cracker
@WaterGirl: You really do get a sense of the effort involved when you can see those wings working the air currents in slow-mo. Magnificent creatures!
raven
@WaterGirl: They don’t fly much in daylight so this isn’t they greatest but it’s real.
BTW we think this is the same owl.
NotMax
@Mnemosyne
Some history (and there were successful African-American entertainers who naturally were darker than the burnt cork).
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@raven: Thanks for all the owl stuff. It’s all quite cool.
Pogonip
@WaterGirl: Owls are neat. I hear a lot of hooting around here, some of which does come from owls, but rarely see them. What I see a lot of are peregrines; for some reason they’ve become ubiquitous around here in the last few years.
Pogonip
Also, we’ve got a shortage of lightning bugs. Even when winters are mild, we have few lightning bugs. I miss them.
Never seem to run short of (bleep)ing mosquitoes, though!
jeffreyw
@Ferdzy: I have an ancient Rival machine, just like the one in this video.
Mnemosyne
I feel even more justified in not buying a Mazda now that they’re being recalled for a frickin’ SPIDER INFESTATION.
Sounds like a joke, but is not. Eek!
J R in WV
We have a big population of barred owls just above our house in the head of the hollow, up on the ridge. I can hoot and they will hoot back, even tho they know I’m not quite an owl.
Out in SE Arizona we saw a big owl fly out in front of the truck just before total darkness. It would be in a tree above a pond, what they call a stock tank out there, and as the truck came to the tree it would fly out the road.
I have no idea what kind of owl that was, as I’m new to the south-west, it never made much noise. I’d love to hear opinions from people familiar with owls of the sonoran desert. Our AZ place is just 25 miles north of the border, in the foothills of the Dragoon Mtns. There is a huge mountain lion in the neighborhood, and neighbors have seen coatimundis and other strange critters.
I have some pretty good pictures of a fox just a few hundred yards from the house out there, too.
I’ve seen the barred owls around home in W Va in the evenings, and hear them most evenings when the weather is such that you can have the windows open.
ranchandsyrup
well done mrs cracker
another Holocene human
@Arm The Homeless: pffff, don’t be daft. Hit the National Bldg Museum at judiciary square, National Gallery just to the east, lunch/shop at Union Station if you fancy crowds or west at Old Post Office bdlg if you care for a walk and like quirky old bldgs. All on red line that takes u back to MD. Unless u are staying on green, lol.
Douglas Wayne Wieboldt
@JPL: I’m sad as well. I’m very happy however that our President allowed her to stay through this most critical period for the ACA. I was hoping the happy enrollment numbers might mean that she would stay. I’m just hoping that this was her decision and not something from the white house…
Douglas Wayne Wieboldt
@JPL: I’m sad as well. I’m very happy however that our President allowed her to stay through this most critical period for the ACA. I was hoping the happy enrollment numbers might mean that she would stay. I’m just hoping that this was her decision and not something from the white house…
Douglas Wayne Wieboldt
@JPL: I’m sad as well. I’m very happy however that our President allowed her to stay through this most critical period for the ACA. I was hoping the happy enrollment numbers might mean that she would stay. I’m just hoping that this was her decision and not something from the white house…